The Corrupted
"Huh? What... what is that?"
"Is that... a person?"
High school kids sitting at the playground in front of the senior center stared at it with puzzled faces. A few stood and walked closer, trying to make out what the thing actually was.
"Look out!"
A sharp scream of warning cut the air, but before anyone could react, its claws lashed out first.
Slash!
It was a horrifying thing, how easily a human body could be cut. The high school student who had approached out of nothing more than curiosity lost his head in a single stroke; blood sprayed in every direction. It snatched the falling neck so not a drop would be wasted and greedily pressed its mouth to the wound.
Slurp... glug!
At that grotesque sight and the wet, ravenous sound of blood-drinking, the remaining students froze where they sat, terror locking their limbs.
"Urgh!"
"What the hell is that?"
"Fuck! Hyuk!"
Whoosh!
A wooden sword tore through their midst and smashed into it while it was still lost in feeding.
"Gwaaak!"
The sword had been less thrown than fired—so fast it might as well have been a bullet. It punched clean through the creature's body and buried itself in the tree behind. A wooden sword pinning something to a tree! And not merely that: it had gone straight through it first.
"Run!"
Only then did the high school students snap free of their shock and scramble away.
"Damn it. This lawless bastard!"
"Even if you're an orphan, this is going too far!"
The two who appeared before it launched straight into condemnation. The talk of missing parents made one thing clear: they were vampires—and fairly powerful ones. Even among the strong, vampires who could hurl a wooden sword hard enough to pin a body to a tree were rare.
"Grrraaaaaah!"
It snapped the wooden sword lodged in its chest and raised its arms into a defensive stance. The vampires traded uneasy looks. Of all places, a residential neighborhood—they could not fight freely here.
"Shit. No choice! I'll take its head!"
The vampire who had thrown the sword stepped forward, then suddenly dropped low as if bowing to the earth. The slender one behind him swung his arm without warning.
Whiiing!
A clear ringing note accompanied a spray of hard keratin. It flung itself aside, but the crouching vampire kicked off the ground and leaped. In a single bound he covered seven meters and was instantly on the creature's heels.
"Kyaaaaah!"
"Haaat!"
It flailed in a frenzy, snapping a street tree and swinging the branch. Under the dim mercury lamps the attack was almost too fast to see, yet the vampire shouted a battle cry and shattered his own body into countless fragments.
Clang!
"Kugh!"
The sharp, ice-shard fragments shredded it to pieces in an instant, then reformed into human shape atop a street tree on the far side.
Thud!
Like a heavy jar set down hard on a crock platform, it crashed to the ground with a dull, heavy impact.
"Kraaaaah!"
"Man, that's loud. You'll wake everyone up."
The slender male vampire muttered playfully as he gathered broken branches and flung them forward. The sticks shot out like arrows from a bow, then twisted ninety degrees midair and stabbed into the creature pinned on the ground.
"Kaak!"
It was now staked to the earth, unable to so much as twitch. The vampire in the tree dropped down.
"See? Easy. This bastard made us feed the kids for nothing."
"Careful. In the comics, this is always when they get away."
"Don't jinx it."
The vampires traded jokes and laughed it off. Then they saw it reach toward its own ankle.
"Huh?"
Tat-tat-tang!
Gunshots cracked. The vampire in front shattered his body into fragments to minimize the damage, but the slender one behind could not dodge in time.
Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!
A submachine gun?
The lead vampire startled, leaped onto the building, kicked off the wall once, and landed on the second-floor rooftop. Good thing no one was inside the senior center—if there had been people, it would have been a disaster. No: the disaster had already begun.
"Kyaaaaah!"
"W-what's that sound?"
At the gunfire, screams and voices rose from all over the residential streets. Police would be on their way any minute.
"Damn it! Yuhu!"
The vampire screamed his partner's name, but the slender one who had taken too many rounds lay motionless on the ground. That could only mean every bullet had been silver-treated.
"Shit! Goddamn it!"
He looked again at the gun it was aiming at him. Drawing a weapon from inside its own body—and the pistol it held was a Glock 18, the quintessential polymer handgun, the 9mm version that with a long magazine could hold a terrifying thirty-three rounds.
"You son of a bitch!"
Bang!
He wanted nothing more than to avenge Yuhu, but it was laying down accurate fire while prying itself free of the ground. Worse, police sirens were already wailing from the main road.
"Kraaagh! You bastard, I'll kill you for sure!"
The vampire Gyeong left a cry thick with rage and launched himself from rooftop to rooftop. No matter how furious he was, the vampires' unspoken rules had to be kept.
Wailing sirens!
"Grrraaaaaah!"
Confirming that the powerful vampire Gyeong had fled the scene, it rose and looked down at the fallen Yuhu. This vampire had taken a dozen 9mm rounds and was still alive—just unable to move.
"Grrraaaaaah!"
Tormented by violent hunger, it was little better than a hungry ghost. Human or vampire, if something lay collapsed right in front of it, there was no reason to refuse.
Crunch. Tear...
From a bench beside the playground thick with wisteria, a black shadow sat hunched and tore into the writhing vampire.
Se-geon parked the XR-250 in front of Arjuna. On that desolate autumn night with the leaves nearly all fallen, the place still held a certain atmosphere of its own.
"..."
If not for the signs at the entrance reading Restaurant and No Minors After 10 PM, he might have fully soaked in the autumn mood. Those signs definitely had not been there before. In the few days he had stayed away they had gone up—had she quit the shop and sold it to someone else? Se-geon reached for the door with a baffled look.
Ding-a-ling.
The bell rang as he opened it. He sighed and stepped inside. The fragrant aroma of coffee greeted him first.
"..."
The floor that had once seemed needlessly spacious for an occult shop now held sofas and tables arranged into seating, and one side of the counter stood open. Over there a young woman in a formal suit and vest was serving alongside Kim Seong-hui. Kim Seong-hui was minding the counter; when her eyes met Se-geon's she smiled warmly.
"Welcome."
"Uh... the shop, this is..."
"I thought I'd run a coffee shop on the side too. I expected the permits would be hard, but it wasn't that bad. Looks like if you don't sell alcohol, the approval goes through easily."
But Arjuna still dealt in all kinds of illegal goods, didn't it? Se-geon was so flabbergasted he could only stick out his tongue.
"Special customers get received upstairs, of course."
"Upstairs?"
"Yeah. Oh, right. Se-geon, want something to drink? I was thinking of showing off my skills a little."
Kim Seong-hui beamed, clearly delighted by his dumbfounded face. The smile was so purely happy he could not even argue. She must have secretly wanted to do this all along.
"Where's Silvester?"
"I think he was sleeping... he might be up by now."
"Hmm. I had a few things I wanted to ask him."
Se-geon muttered and looked up at the ceiling. Meditation music drifted from speakers hanging there. What on earth did customers who walked into a place like this think? But the guests were giggling and taking in their surroundings; it seemed to have its own unique charm.
"Should I wait upstairs?"
"Sure. What kind of tea do you want?"
"If it's free, an iced latte."
"Even though it's a bit chilly?"
"Still. I'm not good with hot drinks. Spicy food's fine, though."
Se-geon finished speaking and hurried upstairs.
Silvester was in a room wallpapered with children's print of The Simpsons characters. Absurdly, he was sleeping with his head on a giant dog-bone-shaped cushion. On the nightstand by the bed sat a thick Latin Bible, a rosary, and a porcelain Virgin Mary bowed toward them.
"..."
Click!
Silvester whipped a pistol from under the cushion and leveled it at Se-geon in a flash. Se-geon stood still and watched.
"What. It's you? You'd better break the habit of barging into someone else's sleeping quarters. You never know when you'll get shot and die."
"Haah. This room is incredibly unbalanced, isn't it..."
"Shut it. She's the one who made it this way."
Silvester sat up. Looking at Se-geon, he rubbed his face with one hand and asked,
"Aah... what is it? As if things weren't bad enough, Row Gibson went back to the States, and I've been left looking like a dog that chased a chicken."
"No. Haven't you seen what the media's been going on about lately?"
When Se-geon spoke with a sullen look, Silvester got off the bed. He put on his priest's cassock and the coat over it. The coat—woven of Spectra, synthetic polymer, and silver chain covering only the vital points—was the bare minimum of armor Silvester wore.
To think a man dressed like that is called a Jinma hunter who unilaterally slaughters countless vampires.
Se-geon simply could not understand him.
"What they've been going on about lately. You mean that monster that killed people right out in the open in the park?"
"Yes. What do you think?"
"It's a Corrupted. Leave it alone and it'll die on its own."
Silvester spoke as if it were nothing and tucked weapons into his coat. Se-geon sighed at the sight.
"People are dying right now. And that... Cor... what is it?"
"Corrupted."
Silvester answered shortly and brushed past him.
"Don't come to me for answers. I'm not your private tutor. And whatever it is... what does it matter to you?"
"..."
Se-geon thought of Jin Yu-mi and Yoon Mi-hye and closed his mouth. Right. Vampire or human, once the vampirization progressed, you killed them. That was the only way to save them. Hadn't he already killed vampires like that?
"It wouldn't be worth any money, would it?"
"Naturally a Corrupted's blood is worthless. But a Corrupted draws out the executioners. High-class vampires who normally can't be bothered to leave their seats come out to protect their Clan. For hunters who work for money, it's a real windfall."
Silvester said so, but his expression was inwardly displeased. Certainly Korea was becoming land of the highest importance to vampires. That was tied to the fact that Juk-yo and Chang-woon—the two oldest Jinma—had fought each other, and as a result both had met their deaths in Korea at Silvester's hands.
As a result, the Clan of the Jinma Juk-yo, the Juk-yo Hall, had been left entirely in Korea. If a Jinma died at the hands of a vampire, the one who inherited the blood became the new Jinma. But if a Jinma died to a human and no new Jinma arose, that Clan became a target for other vampires. The easiest way to raise VT was to drain a powerful vampire's blood, so the Juk-yo Hall, with no Jinma to protect them, made for a juicy meal.
Phantom's refined Clan might stay quiet, but the others would not. The vampires' underhanded struggles—or hunts—would unfold with Korea as their stage.
But a Jinma won't show himself just to deal with a Corrupted.